It’s not because he stood me up for an interview a few years back. And it’s not because he’s some jumped-up teen heartthrob from a bygone era. It’s because Jared Leto persists in taking himself seriously as a musician when no one else ever has, or will. But, hey, every band needs at least one album with a tiger on the cover, right?
Switching stances from his predictable screamo meets dreamo antics, the 38-year-old Leto and his brother Shannon have adopted a more atmospheric approach to things on this ridiculously pretentious example of over-grasping hubris. The macho caché of the album’s much-touted single “This is War,” produced by U2 switch-throwers Flood and Lillywhite, seems to give Mars all the encouragement it needs to posture and preen through 11 more increasingly excruciating tracks, culminating in the debilitating seven-minute monstrosity “Stranger in a Strange Land.”
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